Tuesday, November 30, 2010

1. Lady Clarke and Ms. Florence Murphy were the most notable members of this group. Which group are we talking about and what is the connection with the Ashes?

2. Melbourne Punch(2 August 1855 - December 1925) was an Australian illustrated magazine formed by Edgar Ray and Frederick Sinnett, modelled closely on the London Punch. How is the Melbourne Punch related to the history of the Ashes?

3. Martin Johnson, in of the greatest quotable quotes of all time said this “ There are only three things that are wrong with this team ________, _________ and _________. Fill in the blanks

4. “ I see that his highness is conscientious objector” This was a rather sarcastic remark made by Douglas Jardine. About whom and what was the reason?

5. The washout at Melbourne in the ashes of 1971 led to an invention in cricket that many believe has led to the degeneration of the game. What?

6.The below mentioned is an exhaustive list. What connects them?

Spofforth F, Australia

Bates W, England

Briggs J, England

Hearne J, England

Trumble H, Australia

Warne S, Australia

Gough D, England

Clue: There was one more edition to this list after the first match in Brisbane in this year.

7. This is a very rare photograph of a huge cricket fan taken during the ashes series. ID the personality.

8. This picture was taken by the famous photographer Steve Lindsell. How do we more famously know the happening?(If possible, ID both players)

9. This usually happens once in 4 years and the years this phenomenon has happened are:

Sunday, November 28, 2010

1. Sitter: In 1972/73, when X was ten years old, her cousin, Mayadin, became the head of the family. He sent workers to cut down the neem tree (which was effectively the family's nest egg, in the village of Gorkha ka Purwa, UP) and sell the wood, intending to keep the proceeds for himself. Although her father saw no use in protest, X confronted her cousin. She taunted him, publicly called him a thief, and with her older sister staged a sit-in on his land. Even after violence against X—knocking her out with a brick—she wouldn't relent. In an effort to rid himself of the little nuisance, Mayadin arranged to have her married to a man named Putti Lal, who lived several hundred miles away. Putti Lal was in his thirties; X was eleven. She claimed in her autobiography that he was a man of "very bad character". In 1979, Mayadin accused X of stealing from his house. She denied the accusation, but the police arrested her anyway. In those three days in jail, she was beaten and raped repeatedly, then left in a rat-infested cell. She knew that her cousin was behind the injustice against her. The experience broke her body but ignited her hatred for men who routinely denigrated women.

Whose history?

2. Put fundae.

3. The name of the band was described by the band members as meaning "criss cross rhythms that explode with happiness" but it actually comes from the Fante word for highlife. They were one of the first bands from their continent to become hugely popular, leading to claims of their founding World Music. Identify this band.

4. During the recent ATP World Tour Finals in London, the pair of X and Y received the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year award for spreading their message. Identify X and Y, and what was the message?

(comment about the second video: Even Chuck Norris shed a tear. watch and you'll know why.)

cracked by Praveen and Jun

2. The Last Breakfast

cracked by Praveen, Sticky, Meenam, Sourabh and Shiva.

3. Satyendranath Bose, after whose name the sub-atomic particles Bosons are named.

cracked by Praveen, Sticky, Sourabh, both Arjun's, Shiva. Part points to 2D

4. Officially, the world's dullest days.

Quoting Hindustan Times:

It was the year the Queen became the first reigning monarch to visit Australia and Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio, but 1954 also boasts of having the most boring day of the 20th century — April 11. After feeding 300 million facts into a new search engine, experts have announced there were no key news events or births and deaths of famous people.

"When the results came back, the winner was April 11, 1954 — a Sunday. Nobody significant died that day, no major events apparently occurred...," William Tunstall-Pedoe, founder of the new search engine True Knowledge, said.

According to BBC Radio, April 18, 1930, was the dullest day of the 20th century after an announcer informed the nation in the 6.30pm bulletin, "There is no news."

Cracked only by Shtud.

5. Roadrunner it is.

cracked by 2D, Sticky, Sundaram, both Arjun's and Shiva.

Added funda: According to Chuck Jones's rules for the show, there is no dialogue, except for "Beep, beep" and Wile E. Coyote yowling in pain.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

In a curious experiment initiated by Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, X donned a baseball cap and played as an incognito street busker at the Metro subway station L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C. on January 12, 2007. The experiment was videotaped on hidden camera; among 1,097 people who passed by, only seven stopped to listen to him, and only one recognized him. For his nearly 45-minute performance, X collected $32.17 from 27 passersby (excluding $20 from the passerby who recognized him). Weingarten won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for his article on the experiment. Identify X.

2. Question contribution: Rammohan

What is this painting called?

3. Funda contribution: Rammohan

In 1924, while working as a Reader at the Physics Department of the University of Dhaka, X wrote a paper deriving Planck's quantum radiation law without any reference to classical physics and using a novel way of counting states with identical particles. This paper was seminal in creating the very important field of quantum statistics. After initial setbacks to his efforts to publish, he sent the article directly to Albert Einstein in Germany. Einstein, recognizing the importance of the paper, translated it into German himself and submitted it on X's behalf to the prestigious Zeitschrift für Physik. As a result of this recognition, he was able to leave India for the first time and spent two years in Europe, during which he worked with Louis de Broglie, Marie Curie, and Einstein. Why is he famous today?

cracked by Ashok (credit for pointing out that funda), Sticky and Sundaram

3.

X: Jolyon Wagg

Y: Herge

Z: Capn. Haddock

cracked by Sticky and Devang Ghia

4. Time displayed on all ads.

Explained by some big shot from Apple: "We design the (product launch) keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience's watches. But we know we won't hit 40 minutes exactly."

Thursday, November 25, 2010

1. The word X was first used in 1970 to describe an article (The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved, for Scanlan's Monthly) by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style. The "X fist," characterized by two thumbs and four fingers, was originally used in Hunter S. Thompson's 1970 campaign for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado. It has become a symbol of Thompson and X journalism as a whole. What am I talking about, and what is the significance of this journalistic style?

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

2.X has its headquarters at Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka.The first X was opened in 1996 on Brigade Road in Bangalore.Today there are more than 1000 Xs in 141 cities.X has even tied up with WorldSpace and Microsense to enable its Xs with satellite radio and Wi-Fi, respectively.Now X is expanding into Europe by opening two Xs in Austria.Identify.

3.X is an insurance salesman working for Rock Bottom Insurance.He often tries to sell other characters insurance.Y based him on a salesman who came to Y's door and invited himself inside.X is a gregarious, simple, and overbearing man who enters the story by barging in uninvited.Z finds X frustrating, although X remains cheerfully oblivious and believes himself a great friend of Z.X often quotes his Uncle Anatole's stories, to Z's irritation.X is portrayed as a clueless tourist in the exotic places.X is generally seen as a more modern character, as opposed to the older archetypes that inhabit Y's earlier works.X? Y and Z become obvious then.

1. Funktionide is basically an advanced robotic pillow which responds to your mood by changing it's form depending on the way you hold it. Ulrich says that this is the first step in robots replacing humans as potential life partners. Go figure.

cracked by Ashok and Shiva

2. PETA campaigns against fur and fishing/hunting as sport, targeted at children, which came under heavy criticism for its portrayal.

Monday, November 22, 2010

1. This is something known as Funktionide, created by German designer Stefan Ulrich. What exactly is it?

2.

Picture 1 depicts something that was released in 2003. Picture 2, in 2005.

Put fundae.

3. "In the teeming metropolis of Mumbai, four people separated by class and language are drawn together in compelling relationships. Shai, an affluent investment banker on a sabbatical, strikes up an unusual friendship with Munna, a young and beautiful laundry boy with ambitions of being a Bollywood actor, and has a brief dalliance with Arun, a gifted painter. As they slip away from familiar moorings and drift closer together, the city finds its way into the crevices of their inner worlds."

Official synopsis of which film?

4. The first awards were held on February 11, 2009, at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, NY. Approximately 300 people attended the event and dozens were turned away. The event was hosted by CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and featured an in-person guest appearance by MC Hammer and a video appearance by Shaquille O'Neal. The second awards were held at the Times Center in the New York Times building in Manhattan. Awards are usually presented in 26 official categories.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is the primary sponsor of the awards. The awards are organized by the co-founders of the Brooklyn-based startup company Sawhorse Media.

Identify the awards, and tell me who they honour.

5. Hand drawn map of something drawn by whom?

6. sitter for all the Crucible quizzers out there: The name of this company is derived from the surname of the company's Greek founder, Sotirio Voulgaris, who began his career as a jeweller in his home village Paramythia, where his first store is still seen. In 1877, he left for Corfu and then Naples. In 1881 he finally moved to Rome, where in 1884 he founded his company and opened his second shop in via Sistina. The current flagship store in via dei Condotti was opened in 1905 by him with the help of his two sons, Constantino and Giorgio. (unrelated to question: During the Second World War, Costantino and his wife Laura even hid three Jewish women in their own Roman home.) The store quickly became a place where the world's rich and famous came for the unique, high quality jewelry designs combining Greek and Roman art. What?

2. Galena is the natural mineral form of lead sulfide. One of its earliest uses of was as kohl, in Ancient Egypt. It also found use in early wireless communication systems, and in contact junction rectifiers (popularly known as "cat's whiskers") which were used as detectors in early crystal radios, till World War II. In 2009 however, it became world famous for its use as something. Put fundae, and id what it was used as.

3. Willem de X was a Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He co-authored a paper with Albert Einstein in 1932 in which they argued that there might be large amounts of matter which do not emit light, now commonly referred to as dark matter. He came up with the concept of the de X space and de X universe, a solution for Einstein's general relativity. He was also famous for his research on the planet Jupiter. Gimme X. Sitter.

4. An anecdote has it that when Philip II sent a message to Sparta saying "If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta to the ground", the Spartans responded with the single, terse reply: "X". What?

5. 'We love Hollywood. We just have a funny way of showing it.' Tagline of?

6. “Yea, it’s on. I’m not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you can’t really ever be sure with farm animals…), but I like the idea of comparing two people together.”

1. The word has been traced back to use in Provence and Gascony, where it was used to describe anything which brought luck to a household. Suggestions were rife that that the word is derived from the Provincial French word for "concealed" , but thus is improbable. The word was first popularized in 1880, when French composer Edmond Audran wrote a popular comic operetta (the title of which is a direct reference to it). However, it had been in use in France long before this, as French slang among gamblers, derived from an Occitan word meaning "witch", and also another one meaning "spell." Audran's operetta was so popular that it was translated into English, introducing the word into the English language with its current definition.

2. The success and resulting cultural influence of the film X has spawned many references. The use of the nicknames (used in the film) in masculine communication, particularly "Y" and "Z", is often replicated or parodied. The masculine theme of the film has been the subject of humorous examination, with the homoerotic subtext examined in a monologue by Quentin Tarantino in Sleep with Me. X has also been spoofed in the 1991 film Hot Shots! starring Charlie Sheen, and liberally borrowed from in the 2004 Bollywood film Agnipankh. A quote from the film is one among AFI's 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes, which is directly referenced in a successful game franchise. Identify X, Y and Z.

3. simple one: The first time the phrase __________ was used was after X performed a concert in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1954, by announcer Al Dvorin. It was then used by promoter Horace Lee Logan on December 15, 1956, to plead with concert goers not to leave a concert hall to try to see X as he exited, and instead remain to see the other acts on the bill. The full quotation was "Please, young people... __________. He has gotten in his car and driven away.... Please take your seats." Who is X and what is the phrase?

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

1. X is the hero of a Nintendo DS game, Boing! X DS, which was released in Japan, North America and Europe. He has a wide variety of merchandising such as cell phone straps, keychains, and plush dolls. He is one of the most recognized characters in Japan. Identify.

2. Such a sitter I'm not even sure why I'm asking: These two players are part of an elite list. Who are the remaining two members in the list?

3.

Memory test.

"This one is for the books."

Identify the headline, and put fundae.

4.

Pictures 1 and 2 are the flag and the coat of arms respectively, of the third largest city in Ireland.

Picture 3 is the photograph of an artist, illustrator, author and poet, a popular figure in 19th century Britain.

Connect.

5.

This is somebody's high school yearbook picture.

The caption says "We go play hoop" and the inscription reads "Thanks Tut, Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times". Choom is slang for “pot smoking”.

Who is this not-so-infamous person? (apologies for bad picture quality)

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

1. This picture was taken on November 9th, 2010 at the Dubai Mall Aquarium. What has been blanked out? Also identify the two guys.

2. 2010’s ‘Word of the Year’, named by the New Oxford American Dictionary, was coined by Sarah Palin, who introduced the term into US lexicon last July when she used it in a tweet about a proposed Islamic cultural centre near the WTC site in New York: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls _____”. Oxford University Press has defined the word as a verb “used loosely to mean ‘reject’.” What's the good word?

3. This is the route map of something currently in our fair town. What?

Monday, November 15, 2010

1) X is the practice of using copyright law which gives users right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work. In other words, X is a general method for making a work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. What is X.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

1. In what film did Kamal Haasan make a guest appearance, with all his dialogues being from his films?

2. This is the only national park in India that has the tiger, leopard, snow leopard and clouded leopard. It is located close to the Myanmar border, near the Patkai ranges. The Himalayan black bear and the Red Panda which are found only in high altitudes are seen here. It is the only park in the world which has different heights at different levels and the altitudinal variation is as much as 4300 meters. Name it.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

1. The X is an organized crime unit appearing in the DC Comics universe. It was founded by 71 men and women from all over Europe who came together in Spain in 1462, and named themselves X in order to honor their dead allies. The surviving members combined various scientific, arcane and alchemical methods of life extension in order to render themselves immortal. They later discovered that the only way they could stay alive was to own the land they lived on, and to feed off the despair and negative emotions of the human tenants on their lands, they also learned how to become immaterial and possess human bodies. Identify.

2. Might be a little arbit: This is a mid-sized automobile from Audi, made between 1968 and 1994. The origins of the first one have become legendary in Germany. It was the first ever model to have side mounted headlights. It was the company's largest car since the revival of the Audi brand by Volkswagen in 1965. Its name refers to its power output. Identify.

3. Connect the two pictures, and identify the missing person:

4. Connect the following footballers. Exhaustive list as of now.

If there's anybody I missed out on, feel free to say who in the comments :)

Alan Shearer

Andrew Cole

Thierry Henry

Robbie Fowler

Les Ferdinand

Teddy Sheringham

Michael Owen

Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink

Dwight Yorke

Robbie Keane

Ian Wright

Nicholas Anelka

Dion Dublin

Wayne Rooney

Matt Le Tissier

Emile Heskey

Frank Lampard

Ryan Giggs

Paul Scholes

5. This is a Google doodle released on 23rd March, 2010. Two parts to the question. Who does it commemorate? For what reason?

6. Sitter: In the Mahabharatha, who was unable to have any children for a long time, she eventually becoming pregnant, but not delivering for two years, after which she gave birth to a lump of flesh?

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

1. sitter: The X's importance lies in the fact that it was the first photo and only photographic evidence of Y's “head and neck”. Supposedly taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynaecologist, it was published in the Daily Mail on 21 April 1934. Wilson's refusal to have his name associated with the photograph led to it being called X. The image was revealed as a hoax in 1994. X and Y? No part points.

2. another sitter: The term may have been popularized during the California Gold Rush of 1849. The first recorded use is from 1853 in a Texas context. It comes from the notion of justice proceeding "by leaps". Funnily enough, the term is considered an Americanism. Id.

3. This is a term that refers to a politically unstable country dependent upon limited agriculture. As a political science term it is a descriptor first used by the American writer O. Henry in Cabbages and Kings in 1904, a book of related short stories derived from his residence in Honduras, where he was hiding from the U.S. law for bank embezzlement in the U.S. The concept originated with the introduction of a certain fruit to Europe in 1870, by Captain Lorenzo D. Baker who initially bought the fruit in Jamaica and sold them in Boston at a 1,000 percent profit. Id.